


Cohabitation

by holyrobo



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Domestic, Family Dynamics, Fluff, Humor, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 21:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3825991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyrobo/pseuds/holyrobo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurapika and Leorio live together. There is a small living room, an even smaller kitchen, one bedroom and a bathroom. Sometimes Gon and Killua stay with them. Sometimes daily life is normal. Usually, it is not.</p><p>They/Them for Kurapika.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cohabitation

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a load of tumblr writing prompts posts and LeoPika popped into my head for almost all of them. I really cannot apologize enough.  
> Also, it probably should be noted that there's a few descriptions of gross eating habits in this?

The first time that it happened, Leorio didn't really think much of it. There was a fleeting thought that hey, this was pretty weird for the usually serious Kurapika; but that thought had left almost as soon as it had come. Leorio had simply rolled over and drifted back to sleep, choosing to pass it off as a one-off. After all, he did have an important class in the morning that he absolutely could  _not_  be late for. It was probably nothing anyway.

The second time it happened, Leorio took a little more notice. It must have been some kind of reoccurring dream, since what Kurapika, very soundly asleep next to him in their shared bed was saying, was kind of along the same theme they had been mumbling incomprehensibly about a few of nights ago when they'd first accidentally roused Leorio from his slumber. The Kurta was, without a doubt, talking in their sleep.  
"N-no," their sweet voice came, strained a little under some unseen pressure. Leorio watched his partners darting eye movement beneath their eyelids. They were definitely dreaming alright, and whatever it was seemed to be intense. Leorio, basking in the slight green glow of both of their alarm clocks, propped himself up on his elbow with his hand under his chin. He watched the smaller teen beside him, smiling softly. If Kurapika could see him, they'd probably tell him off for looking at them in such a sweet way. He noticed then, with his freezing backside being the biggest hint, that Kurapika had, one again, stolen the majority of the duvet. He stopped smiling and tugged his fair share back.  
"I have to," they started again, struggling to get their words out, their head tossing from side to side a little; "I have to save - I have to get rid of... slay that - dragon."  
Leorio's smile reappeared. Were they really dreaming about slaying dragons? "Who do you have to save?" He asked, unsure if he'd get a reply.   
"The  _princess_ ," Kurapika had exclaimed immediately and with such confidence that Leorio almost thought they were awake. He really hadn't been expecting a reply and he wasn't sure that speaking to his lover while they were sleep talking in the first place was normal or not. Thinking back on it, he wasn't sure how often Kurapika spoke in their sleep. Sure, there had been incidents where he'd been woken up by the most vicious blood curdling screaming he'd ever heard since the blond was plagued with terrible nightmares which they refused to discuss with him, but never sleep talking. At least, none that he could remember. He could've just slept through it before.  
After ten minutes had passed without another word from the sleeping Kurapika and with their eye movements and breathing slowing, Leorio assumed that they wouldn't be saying much more for the rest of that night. He returned to his head to his pillow, just close enough to smell the coconut shampoo on Kurapika's hair, and willed himself to have dragon slaying dreams of his own.

He bought it up at breakfast the following morning, speaking with his mouth full of Rice Krispies which earned him a very dirty look indeed from the blond who'd just finished brewing their usual, ever mysterious fragrant tea - as opposed to Leorio's regular coffee (with lashings of sugar and milk) that sat at the side of his bowl. Kurapika had just sat down with their dry toast and fruity tea when Leorio splattered the table with a mix of saliva, chewed up Rice Krispies and milk as he spoke. "Did you ever get that dragon then?" He said. In reality it came out more like, "duh yuh ever ghet thut drafon then?" but months of tolerating Leorio's downright offensive eating habits had made Kurapika a master of interpreting his mouth-full-of-cereal language.  
"What dragon?" They asked, throwing a disgusted look Leorio's way as the older man swallowed his mouthful. Milk had dribbled in a very ungraceful fashion down his chin. Kurapika munched hopelessly on their dry toast, pulling the crusts off and discarding them as they ate.  
"You don't remember?"  
"No."  
"I see," Leorio mused, reloading his spoon with Rice Krispies. "It doesn't matter, forget I said anything." Maybe they'd subconsciously stop sleep talking now they been made sort-of aware of it anyway. He was sure that was how it worked.  
Kurapika sighed. "Now that  _is_  something I can do."  
Leorio's eyes had narrowed at that comment. He shoved the spoon into his mouth and emptied its load before pointing it towards Kurapika's crust laden plate. "Why do you never eat the crusts anyway?"  
Kurapika paused for a moment, working out what Leorio had said proved tougher since the words 'crusts' and 'anyway' had almost completely merged together. They wondered briefly if it was in fact a new word of that language that they’d not heard before.  
"I just don't like them," they said, getting up from the table and emptying the crusts into the food recycling bin; "a better question is why do  _you_ , an adult, eat a breakfast cereal marketed at _children_?"

*

It was a little past 1am when Leorio ever so carefully crawled into bed next to an already sleeping Kurapika. It had been a painfully long night of studying and he hoped it'd be an even _longer_ night of well deserved, undisturbed sleep. Unfortunately, he'd been in bed for less than two minutes when Kurapika started talking again which dashed his plans entirely. The effort he went to to slip between the sheets without waking his partner up had seemingly gone completely unappreciated. Had it been the similar ramblings they'd had the night before, Leorio would've woken them up and gently told them to shut the hell up. But seemingly tonight would be different.

He regularly forgot that Kurapika's first language was that of the Kurta tribe. They spoke with such eloquence and with such a vast vocabulary that anyone who first met them would probably never have guessed that the tongue they spoke in was actually their second language. After all, there were only the smallest of hints that Kurapika wasn't a native speaker of the language they used every day - a slight accent on some words; occasionally asking how a certain word they'd come across for the first time was correctly pronounced (all of which were words Leorio barely knew how to pronounce himself); and sometimes, but very rarely, a word from their native language would slip into a sentence unnoticed when the word they were looking for had slipped their mind.  
So hearing them speak _completely_ in their _glorious_ mother tongue had sent Leorio's poor unprepared heart into frenzy. When his name appeared in the middle of an utterance he feared he was going into cardiac arrest. Sweat gathered on his brow. The language sounded so rich as he listened. It was an arrangement of sounds that when strung together seemed sweeter than any song - every note of which seemed to fit Kurapika perfectly. It was almost like he hadn't really known them before now. It was like hearing a song for the first time and knowing immediately that that would be the song that would be on repeat for the rest of the week. It sounded how Leorio assumed the sight of wind skirting over grass, creating waves on plants would sound. He really was in love, he thought. 

He listened for a good ten minutes to Kurapika's continued desperate rambling. His name seemed to appear several times, always after a certain word in the same way that someone would say 'brother Leorio', or 'my friend Leorio'. Breaking out of his love-stuck stupor, he grabbed the small notepad and the pen they kept for any phone numbers they needed to take note of out of the bedside table drawer and hastily wrote out the word phonetically. Whether he would be able to even read it in the morning after writing it with no light whatsoever would be a mystery he looked forward to solving. He set it back in its place and tried to sleep, even though he wouldn’t have minded listening to Kurapika’s sleep talking all night long – but in the end, the blonds’ gradually quieting but long, rumbling words, running like the calm flow of water down a stream, lulled him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Leorio had the notebook with him the next morning at the breakfast table. He wouldn't have gotten up so early if not for the nagging feeling of wanting to know what the word meant. He watched sleepily as Kurapika showed their adventurous side - breaking their usual routine by adding the most meagre coating of butter into their toast that Leorio had ever seen. He looked down at his Shredded Wheat, a much more  _adult_  cereal, with utmost disappointment and stabbed one with his spoon, pulling it apart slightly. It did not look appetising at all and was, unsurprisingly, nowhere near as good as his regular Rice Krispies.  
The smell of Kurapika's fruity tea was beginning to attack his nose when he opened the notebook and asked them what the word meant. He had no idea if he'd said it right, but the way that Kurapika's shoulders stiffened hinted that he had.  
"Where did you learn that word?" They asked, turning away from the teapot and looking at Leorio with a frosty, guarded glare as if the man was keeping some terrible secret from them. Leorio shifted slightly on his chair and adjusted the tiny spectacles on his nose.  
"You said it in your sleep last night," he said, keeping eye contact with them while breaking apart the other Shredded Wheat with his spoon.  
Silence wove between them as Kurapika filled their teacup with tea. Leorio ate his Shredded Wheat and felt himself get almost instantly healthier but infinitely more boring. Kurapika took their place at the small kitchen table across from him and began pulling the crusts off of their barely-buttered toast.  
"It means 'princess'," they said softly after a minute or two, keeping their eyes on their sad slice of toast.  
"Oh, hmm, I see," Leorio said, pushing the straw like substance around his bowl. He guessed he was at the point where it was either eat it or starve and starving was barely an option. He tried it. He hated it. Kurapika's translation finally caught up with him.  
"Waut!  _Prinfcuss_  Leforio!?" Leorio exclaimed, slamming his hands down on the table: his eyes as wide as saucers. Spindles of half chewed Shredded Wheat were spewed everywhere. Milk jumped out of the bowl from the force. Leorio's coffee was almost knocked clean off the edge. Kurapika, completely startled by the sudden outburst, spilt their tea all over themself. The sad, discarded crusts leapt from their plate in a desperate bid for freedom.  
" _Leorio!_ " The blond yelled, standing up in shock with their hands flying to their hips. Leorio copied the action.  
"I don't understand why  _I'm_  the princess in your dreams!"  
Kurapika flushed with embarrassment, their face reddening all the way down to their neck. Their brown eyes were tinged red at the edges. "H-How do you know what I was dreaming about last night?"  
"You talk in your sleep, dumb ass! You must have been having a reoccurring dream and you've been talking about it the last two nights in a row," Leorio said, relaxing a little and slipping into a small, apologetic smile as he grabbed the kitchen towel and walked over to smaller teen before mopping up the spilt tea on their clothes. Kurapika took the towel off him almost immediately with a sharp, "I can do that myself" and a "you'll make it stain like that."  
It didn't take too long to clean up the mess, though Leorio had to deal with the remnants of Shredded Wheat that'd been ejected out of his mouth as Kurapika wouldn't touch them. Leorio brewed a fresh pot of Kurapika's fancy tea that he didn't really like the smell of and made them more toast - dry this time - and cut the crusts off ready for them since they didn't have chance to finish their original slice (it had been covered in Shredded Wheat and had sent the blond green just looking at it).

Kurapika made Leorio another coffee, even though the amount of sugar he liked in it made them feel queasy, since the original had been too cold to drink; and they fixed him a bowl of Rice Krispies even though they wished Leorio would act more like an adult and care more for his own health. They both paused to wonder how they’d ended up together and how they even worked _well_ as a pair regardless of their differences. Leorio was consumed with an overwhelming desire to kiss his knight in shining armour.

After that, they resumed their places at the table and started breakfast over again, as if the last ten or so minutes hadn't happened. Halfway through his Rice Krispies, which now he was eating very carefully, Leorio finally asked the question that'd been bugging him all this time.

"So, did you end up saving me from that dragon or not?"  
Kurapika kicked him under the table.

**Author's Note:**

> July 2016: unfortunately I am not continuing this series, and it will be left at having only one chapter. Sorry!


End file.
